Writing for the Hudson Institute, Lee Smith makes a clear,logical and convincing analysis of the Russian-Iranian-Syrian alliance against the US. Unfortunately, the recommendation he draws from this analysis is wrong: he urges America to allow itself to be drawn into the horrors that are happening in Syria.

There can be no doubt Lee Smith is correct when he says:

“Moscow has made it clear that it wants to see the Assad regime survive. To Putin, Syria represents not merely a customer for Russian arms, but—much more important—a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean. He sees a Syrian port for the Russian Navy as a core interest, not to mention recently discovered energy resources in the Levant basin that he would like to control,so as to make Europe even more dependent on Russia’s natural gas industry”.

That much is clear to anyone who has been observing the decades of strategic struggles between the great powers.

However, for the US to fight—even indirectly—in Syria would be a terrible mistake. Syria will become another Afghanistan for Russia. Let it. We should not allow Syria to become another Afghanistan for America.

While I recommend this piece for the cogent geopolitical analysis it provides, we should resist its call for another military involvement in the Middle East.

#Pakistan #censorship #siliconvalley So who is emailing in their bids? "Good luck trying to find out," said an executive at a technology company which sells products to many developing nations including Pakistan. "Nobody here is going to talk about that--nobody. Forget even getting something on background. And don't you dare use our company name.﻿

According to the BCG press release, the report's authors based their assessment of the Internet's value on "how much consumers said that they would have to be paid to live without Internet access." People living in the G-20 nations say they would need to be paid (on average) $1430 each to go without it.

Be that as it may, how much money would be enough of an inducement to get you to stay off the Internet for an entire year? And more importantly, do you think you could actually do it?﻿